Meet Ansible, a system orchestration tool. It has no dependencies other than python and ssh. It doesn’t require any agents to be set up on the remote hosts and it doesn’t leave any traces after it runs either. What’s more, it comes with an extensive, built-in library of modules for controlling everything from package managers to cloud providers, to databases and everything else in between. If you’ve spent more time writing cookbooks rather than using them, Ansible will be your cure.
Meet Docker, a utility for creating virtualized Linux containers for shipping self-contained applications. As opposed to a traditional VM which runs a full-blown operating system on top of the host, Docker leverages LinuX Containers (LXC) which run in the same kernel, no hypervisor overhead. This results in a more efficient usage of system resource by trading some of the isolation specific to hypervisors.